En Passant

These two actions – appointing former mining maggot and climate change denier Gary Gray to the resources portfolio and merging Climate Change with the Environment – are good examples of Labor’s bankruptcy; of its complete capitulation to neoliberalism and the idea that the market is the best way to organise society and profit the only god to be worshipped.

Of course, whether we leave behind a world to our descendants as beautiful as the one we were born into, will depend on our own independent, organized self-activity to wrench control away from a ruling elite that is quite happy to continue making money from a system that must be overturned.

I call bullshit on The Australian and its reporting of climate change and its denial of humanity’s role in it.

Stunts like Moylan’s will draw attention to the issues at least momentarily and I defend his actions. But to really address climate change, to stop the mining of fossil fuels and to move rapidly to a totally renewable energy society requires the working class entering on to the stage of history and overthrowing the impediment to real change – capitalism. The working class has to be our focus for fundamental change.

The urgency is great. Capitalism cannot cure itself. It is driven by its internal logic to destroy the planet in the search for profit and the reinvestment of any surplus value we create. The choice is becoming starker and starker. It is either socialism with democracy, planning and satisfying human need leading to a secure and safe environment or the continuation of capitalism and the descent into global warming barbarism.

Real answers to climate change will only come from the people – when we manage to organize and fight for the things we need through a radical change in social power -from them to us.

Forget about climate change. Forget about colossal storms, devastating droughts, and disappearing ice. Forget about the threat that huge swathes of the planet might be made permanently uninhabitable. Forget, too, about the industrial processes driving this change, and the companies and executives that profit from them. Forget about all that. Because according to our federal Labor government, there is a much greater threat – one that deserves to be investigated, spied on, infiltrated and prosecuted. The real threat, apparently, is a few dozen activists who are trying to steer society onto a more sustainable path.

Imagine the car plants in Australia being geared up for production to address climate change. They could produce buses for mass public transport, light rail vehicles, high speed rail and trains, electric cars, solar and wind farms…

If we really want to save our world from climate change, we need to see fighting for real reforms and the reining in of corporate power not as an endpoint, but as a stepping stone toward a completely different society. That new society must be one that, in contrast to a capitalist system based on endless growth, competition in pursuit of profit, exploitation, oppression and imperial warfare, will be based on real democracy and cooperation between all people and the planet we depend on. For that, we will need a revolution.

It may well be that the certainty the carbon tax is offering to mining companies and power generators is encouraging the explosion of Coal Seam Gas exploration across the country.